The present anthology is the result of an international conference which was hosted at the German University of Erlangen in April 2004, arranged by Jörn Staecker, then at the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Lund in Sweden, and Carola Jäggi from the Lehrstuhl für Christliche Archäeologie und Kunstgeschichte at the University of Erlangen. The archaeology of the Reformation is the explicit subject of the book, and it should be stressed that the word archaeology is not to be understood in its most ‘down-to-earth’ sense, but in its modern, wider meaning as the study of a broad spectrum of material relics of the past, as also stated in the subtitle to the anthology. The fact that another book has recently been published on the same overall topic and bearing an almost identical title, although in English (D. Gaimster and R. Gilchrist (eds), The archaeology of Reformation, 1480–1580, Leeds 2003 [rev. this Journal lvi. 154]) is an indication of the relevance of this line of study and the on-going research. It is the ambition of the present book, as it was for its British counterpart, to correct the common tendency to base the study of the Reformation exclusively on written sources, using pictures and other material relics merely as illustrations. The Reformation implied several changes in the material culture, not only with respect to churches, but also homes, houses and the public sphere; material relics may shed light on many aspects, which written sources can only suggest or maybe even conceal. Often such artefacts will be able to offer glimpses of the minds of those who manufactured them. It should thus be possible to supplement, disprove or correct hitherto established views of the Reformation in Europe.

The editors have grouped the essays in five main sections. The first one, dealing with approaches and methods, includes an essay by Barbara Scholkmann, in which she discusses the reasons for the strange neglect of archaeological studies of the Reformation and offers an inspiring catalogue of possible questions that should be asked. Berndt Ham goes into the principal discussion, whether the Reformation was a radical and sudden break in history or part of a broad movement which lasted from the twelfth century to the eighteenth. He carefully suggests using a ‘twofold integrative model of innovation: after-effects of the long-term change should be integrated into a total Reformation constellation of abrupt transition, which in its turn can be integrated into other processes of long-term change’.

The second section of the book presents examples of the consequences of Reformation with respect to church interiors. Jörn Staecker describes the gradual – and slow – introduction of new Lutheran types of church furnishings in the churches – at the time of the Reformation – for example on the Danish island of Gotland in the Baltic, while Markus Hiekkanen registers the slow changes to Finnish church interiors where former Catholic altar-pieces were only gradually replaced. Both cases seem to be typical of the rather pragmatic attitude of the Lutheran reformers in Scandinavia, also well-known from Denmark proper, towards pictures and church furnishings from the Catholic era, and a long period of transition. The two other essays in this section, by Doreen Zerbe and Inga Brinkmann, belong to the very rewarding category of memorial studies, which have recently yielded much insight not least into the mentality prevalent at the time of the Reformation. It is evident that religious belief goes hand in hand with a distinct awareness of social distinctions in sixteenth-century sepulchral monuments.

The third section, ‘The confession of faith at home and in public’, offers interesting and at times unexpected glimpses into a new tendency consecutive upon the Reformation to give family and household an almost sacred character through the objects displayed in the rooms or the inscriptions on the walls. In his essay on ‘Sacred and secular spheres’, Jonathan Finch advocates more studies in the links between the two separate spatial spheres – church and home – indicating that the latter was sometimes charged with as much religious significance as the church itself. Christine Vossler analyses inscriptions in favour of a Lutheran faith on the walls of a house in Reutlingen, while David Gaimster considers tiny devotional pipeclay figurines as evidence of a heterogeneous reality with acceptance of the new confessional order on the one hand and resistance to it on the other. Johanna Thali concentrates on the conscious use of pictures, signs and sentences as indications of religious attitudes in a region with religious conflicts around the Catholic town of Lucerne and the Reformed Zürich. Edgar Ring examines the impact of the Reformation at Lüneburg from the archaeological evidence and stresses the existence of workshops in this town which had specialised in Lutheran propaganda on stove tiles, as well as reliefs in clay, papier-maché and wood made by the artist Albert von Soest.

Ring's essay leads onto the fourth section, which could easily have been part of the third, as it deals with stoves and stove-tiles in the light of confessional strife, i.e. confessions of faith at home. It contains no less than four essays on this interesting, but limited topic, by Julia Hallenkamp-Lumpe, Claudia Hoffmann, Eva Roth Heege and Kirsi Majantie. Together with Ring's paper this puts too much emphasis on the topic of stove tiles. The authors agree that there were clear religious propaganda elements in the iconography of sixteenth-century stove-tiles, but other factors may have determined the choice of tiles, not least a wish to decorate one's house fashionably in proper Renaissance style.

The fifth – and shortest – theme is treated in an essay by Stefan Laube on some Luther-memorabilia, which have been honoured in the centuries since his death, not, however, as relics with any magical potential, but simply as a means of remembrance.

In her epilogue Carola Jäggi sums up the contributions to the book, stating, quite justifiably, that it gives ample proof of archaeology being able to contribute to the study of the Reformation, especially by elucidating the emergence of a specifically Protestant way of life.